KIRKUS REVIEW

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) may not be a name most people
mention when they discuss great artists. This biography should change that.

One might wonder how Valadon, whom Hewitt (The Mistress of
Paris: The 19th-Century Courtesan Who Built an Empire on a Secret, 2015)
describes in this excellent biography as having “revolutionized the art world
and irreversibly altered the place of women within that world,” hasn’t received
more widespread recognition. One reason is that Valadon adhered to no school of
painting; another is that she was “a victim of the company she kept.” Some may
think of her only as the mother of cityscape painter Maurice Utrillo or the
model who inspired Renoir’s Dance at Bougival and The
Large Bathers or the muse of Toulouse-Lautrec. Born in rural France to a
linen maid and a father she never knew, Valadon moved to Montmartre with her
mother and sister after her father died. When she was older, she frequented
clubs like Le Chat Noir, where young artists discussed their desire to depict
“contemporary life, the sweat and odour of real men and women.” A self-taught
artist, she started as a nude model. But when Edgar Degas saw her secret
drawings, he said, “you are one of us,” and helped her become the first woman
painter to have works accepted into the Salon de la Société Nationale des
Beaux-Arts. Hewitt chronicles Valadon’s romances and her difficulties in
raising Maurice, whose childhood fits led to his lifelong battle with
alcoholism. More importantly, the author demonstrates that Valadon’s works were
revolutionary not just because of her style—“sharp, almost crude contours,”
with the use of single lines for profiles—but because of the subject matter,
such as children who, far from looking like the cosseted offspring of impressionist
works, were naked, awkward, and “lonely, so incredibly lonely.” Hewitt sums up
Valadon’s achievement perfectly: “Other artists showed what viewers wanted to
see. Suzanne showed them what was true.”

A well-researched tribute to and resurrection of a master
of fin de siècle art.

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